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Man killed expectant mother after learning he was not child’s father, JPSO says

Man killed expectant mother after learning he was not child’s father, JPSO says

Advocate staff photo by MATTHEW HINTON-- Jefferson Parish authorities arrested 29-year-old Emilio Calderon in connection with the strangling of Katherine Martinez. Martinez, 23, who was found dead early Sunday morning on the kitchen floor of her Terrytown apartment, in Harvery, La. Wednesday, June 11, 2014. She had been stabbed three times but an autopsy found the cause of death was strangling.

Police: Ex-boyfriend had stalked victim

No one knew anything was wrong inside apartment 408 until Jefferson Parish deputies arrived early Sunday morning and found a pregnant Katherine Martinez dead on the kitchen floor.

But things had gone terribly wrong hours earlier.

Martinez, who was reportedly being stalked online by her jilted ex-boyfriend, Emilio Calderon, was stabbed and strangled, allegedly at his hands, after he became enraged that she was pregnant by another man, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said Wednesday.

Calderon, 29, was arrested Wednesday and confessed to investigators that he argued with Martinez about the fact that her child was not his, Normand said.

He faces charges of second-degree murder and first-degree feticide.

When Calderon found out Martinez was carrying another man’s baby, he went to her apartment in the 600 block of Whitney Avenue in Terrytown on Saturday, buried a knife in her three times, then gripped his hands around her neck, slowly squeezing the life out of her as she tried in vain to fight him off, Normand said.

By the time her mother arrived there around 1 a.m. Sunday, Martinez and her unborn child had been dead for more than 12 hours, Normand said.

Calderon had allegedly been stalking Martinez through social media using a fictitious name, the sheriff said.

While there apparently was trouble between the two, Normand said, Martinez never filed any police reports against Calderon. Instead, she talked to her family.

Normand said investigators know of no previous violence between the couple or criminal record for Calderon.